1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming device and an image forming program used in the image forming device, and more particularly, to an image forming device which requests user authentication for the start of printout process, and an image forming program used in the image forming device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the image forming device is connected to a plurality of information processing devices (terminals) by way of a network, and is shared by a plurality of users using the plurality of information processing devices. The image forming device is a digital multifunction peripheral (MultiFunction Peripheral (MFP), a Scan Print Copy (SPC), or All In One (AIO)) having at least two or more functions of a printer, a facsimile, a copying machine, a scanner, and the like. The information processing device (terminal) is a personal computer (PC), or the like. The image forming device and the information processing device are communicably connected to each other by way of a communication network such as Local Area Network (LAN) and the Internet to configure an image forming system. The image forming system can be formed by connecting one image forming device and one information processing device at one-to-one in its minimum configuration. Recently, however, a large-scale image forming system is often being built up in which a plurality of image forming devices and a plurality of information processing devices are connected to each other.
When the user attempts to output a printed material of a desired document using the image forming device in such image forming system, the user uses the information processing device to specify the data file of the relevant document saved in the image forming system, select and specify the image forming device to execute the printout of the relevant document from a plurality of image forming devices in the image forming system, and finally, input an instruction to execute the printout to the information processing device.
The information processing device sends job data described with the specified data file and various setting data related to the printout to the specified image forming device. The image forming device that received the job data executes printing based on the job data. The document printed material is discharged from a paper discharge tray of the image forming device. The user then goes to the image forming device and collects the discharged document printed material.
However, the user is not necessarily nearby the image forming device when the document printed material is discharged from the image forming device. Since the image forming device is shared by a plurality of users, another user might be near the image forming device. Thus, a problem of ensuring information security related to the document printed material discharged from the image forming device arises in the image forming system.
JP 6-183110 A discloses a printing device (printer). Such printing device receives print data from a plurality of host computers connected by way of a network, and executes printing based on the received print data. The print data sent to the printer may contain a password. Thus, when receiving the print data from the computer, the printer determines whether or not a password is contained in the received print data. When determined that the received data contains a password, the printer executes the printout based on the received print data only after confirming that the user has correctly input the password through a user interface of the printer.
The printing device disclosed in JP 6-183110 A executes printing when the password given to the print data is matched with the password input by the user. The relevant printing device ensures information security on the information indicated by the print data in this manner.
The technique disclosed in JP 6-183110 A is a technique in which the printing device requests for a password to be input by the user, that is, user authentication as a trigger for defining the start of printout, and is not a technique defining what kind of information the printing device accepts from the user via the user interface or what kind of information input to reject or ignore when the printing device performs user authentication serving as a trigger for defining the start of printout for each printout process.
JP 2006-334873 A discloses an image forming device for executing printing in response to a printing instruction from an external device. When the received printing instruction requests to ensure security, the authentication process related to ensuring of security is performed, and the print data related to the printing instruction is acquired only after the authentication process is successfully completed in the image forming device.
The image forming device disclosed in JP 2006-334873 A thus suppresses the capacity of the memory necessary for keeping the print data at low level, and ensures information security on the printing process.
Numerous documents related to information security of the image forming system have already been proposed.
The image forming device for performing user authentication through a predetermined user authentication means arranged in the image forming device at the start of execution of the printout as disclosed in JP 6-183110 A is already widely known. The technical methodology adopted in the technique of JP 6-183110 A is an effective methodology for ensuring the user to be near the image forming device when the image forming device actually executes the printout.
However, at the point the user authentication disclosed in JP 6-183110 A is successfully completed for the user to start the execution of the printout process, the image forming device does not permit input of information via its user interface with respect to the user related to the relevant user authentication. Thus, even if the user operates the user interface of the image forming device to instruct pause or stop of the printout to the image forming device, such operation will be ignored. In the conventional image forming device, an operation for logging into the image forming device to have the user interface of the image forming device operable is separately requested to the user. The user must separately execute the login operation when attempting to input information via the user interface of the image forming device, and it is thus very difficult to temporarily pause or stop the process being printed out. Such problem is also not addressed JP 2006-334873 A.
When the user attempts to instruct another further image forming process to the image forming device via the user interface of the image forming device when collecting the printed material, the user again needs to separately execute the login operation. Thus, the user sometimes feels bothersome on the operation of the image forming device.